This was my first time attending the Singapore FinTech Festival and I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the conference, chatting with colleagues, listening to sessions, and visiting booths.
The conference was started in 2016 by the Monetary Authority of Singapore and has been held every year since going virtual during the pandemic.
It is the largest attended financial services conference in the world with over 60,000 attendees walking the conference halls over the three days.
This year's conference could have easily changed its name to the Singapore AI FinTech Festival.
From the numerous times it came up in sessions to the many booths and booth talks that AI came up was amazing.
The conference kicked off with a keynote from Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director at the IMF. She spent most of her presentation talking about central bank digital currencies.
The AI industry maturity index was shown, and it listed banking and insurance as some of the lowest industries in projected in 2024 when it comes to maturity.
The highly regulated industries such as financial services and healthcare are towards the bottom.
The main stage had impressive crowds for many of the distinguished speakers the aforementioned Kristalina Georgieva, Ajay Banga, President of the World Bank, Thomas Dohmke CEO of Github, and Bill Winters CEO of Standard Chartered, by far the most highly attended session was the one from the CEO of Ant Financial, Eric Jing.
Even Big Tech taking over some of the bank's functions is good.
The final presentation was from Ajay Banga, and he wants to continue the World's Bank democracy access to financial services.
There were tons of booths and as you moved further away from the technology section the fewer banks there were.
Banks are banks so seeing what new technology is out there was exciting.
Walking the halls as noted AI was mentioned in a lot of booths and in many of booth talks.
There was even one booth create your very own multi-lingual AI Avatar.
As a former credit card product manager and payments marketer I was most intrigued by the Mastercard booth.
For starters it was the only double decker booth at the conference.
It works like a card on file that we are accustomed to but how it interacts with gas stations, toll booths and even just as a personal assistant was cool.
There were booths showing off their payments and wallets.
Even a few booths, such as Visa and DBS, were showing off the metaverse.
This Cyber News was published on feedpress.me. Publication date: Wed, 20 Dec 2023 13:13:08 +0000